Endstory
by Morgan Scorpion
Summary: Scorpius and his life mate of 150 cycles muse about their lives together, and decide on a bold course of action in the present.


  
**ENDSTORY  
  


  
The coughing began again, the sharp pain far beneath my right breast deeper than usual. Scorpius was by my side in a trice, lifting the oxygen mask to my mouth and nose; even though I was perfectly capable of using it myself, and he knew it.   
  
"I'm ok, really, Scorpius", I said.  
  
"The pain is really bad again", he said, stating fact.  
  
There was never any use trying to bluff him, a fact that usually caused me pleasure. It relieved me of the necessity to lie. Though, I do wish that I could deceive him sometimes, to take the pressure off him. The fact that I was so often in pain worried him, his empathic nature meant that, unshielded, he felt it almost as acutely as I did whilst the arthritis that afflicted his right knee and elbow, did not bother me at all; except on those rare occasions when he couldn't suppress a grunt of pain.  
  
Many years ago, whilst defending Scorpius from a Peacekeeper Assassin I had received a knife thrust in the right lung. Unfortunately my system resisted the effects of all the available regenerating drugs, so that after the space of a few months, my lung tissue at the site of the old wound would begin to break down again, resulting in pain, mucus build-up, and coughing. At present, we had exhausted all available healing techniques. To be brutal about it, my lung would not heal again, and I would die within a few months. ... the various drugs I had taken had caused a general metabolic deterioration .... I bruised easily, tired easily, had a poor appetite, and occasionally passed a spot or two of blood in my urine.  
  
Strangely, I did not mind dying so much, for I had a full, rewarding life to look back on; a life made possible by the Scarran-Sebacean hybrid that now sat on my bed, looking at me with such concern in his beautiful, slate-grey eyes, even now only slightly dimmed by age. I reached up and stroked his cheek, Scorpius caught my hand and held it there. What caused me anxiety was Scorpius; I was afraid for him, I didn't want his loyal heart to break, yet break I feared it would. On more than one occasion I had held him in my arms, and heard him say. "No one, and no thing shall part us again, not ever".  
  
I didn't want to leave him, but by all the Gods, I did not want to take him down into death with me.  
  
We have been lovers now for over one hundred and fifty years, and, although there have been many difficult and dangerous times for us, it has been good to us. Scorpius and I were still having of sex; that primordial, lustful force that first brought us together still played an important part in our lives; though nowadays things took a little longer, he was a little slow to get started. I found that taking his sex into my mouth and sucking on it for a while usually brought it to performance capability. And on those occasions when it didn't, well, there was always the pleasures of cuddling, and kissing, and talking long and loving until the small hours of the morning.  
  
The mornings here are beautiful, that clearing of the sky, the gentle breezes from the mountains soughing through the fruit trees, and the multitudinous birds singing in the crisp clear dawn air.  
  
Outside one of our bedroom windows we could look over the valley to the East and watch the lightning of the dark, fading to palest blue as the sun rose. From the other we could watch the sunset at night, watch the spread of colours flow from blue to bluer to black, watch the stars come out. If we weren't too busy, that is.  
  
And when the glories of nature begin to pall, our chauffeur drives our personal flier over to the City where we can sit in a roadside cafe, eating "Don't Ask" kebabs and drinking tea, and watch the people passing by. We occasionally point out some delicious creature that, once upon a time, we would have tried to seduce. We were beyond that now, it was too much like work to have to go through the whole rigmarole of seduction, of negotiating what would and would not be done to whom. With just the two of us, we knew how to please each other, so there was no fuss, no conflict, and no disappointment.  
  
From time to time, Scorpius would attempt to write his memoirs, but it always resulted in him giving up; there was much that he regretted, and much that saddened him.   
  
I could not regret though. The fruits of his works were too wonderful.  
  
His gift of wormhole technology did enable the Peacekeepers to utterly rout the Scarran empire, freeing hundreds of subject worlds from tyranny. The war also resulted in the serious weakening of Peacekeeper might, enabling many of their subject worlds to revolt, and free themselves, especially after Scorpius had given them access to wormhole physics. The fact that many of these worlds proceeded to create their own tyrannies did not negate this. The necessity to resist the "non-violent" Nebari incursions into this new found liberty caused many worlds to unite, with even Scarran remnants joining in to preserve the integrity of their Home System. The fact that many thousands of Scarrans also died in the service of sentient freedom everywhere resulted in a softening of speciesist attitudes towards them, except on those few Sebacean planets where supremacism still prevailed. But they were mainly isolationists, and their refusal to join in the World Party didn't spoil it one bit.  
  
I did wonder sometimes if a new, resurgent PeaceKeeper force would not someday emerge from these isolationist planets to terrorise Sentients again, but, as Scorpius always says: "That will be somebody else's problem."  
  
In the old days I never dreamed that Scorpius would give his precious wormhole physics development to everyone, once his revenge had been visited upon the Scarrans, but, you see, his revenge was towards the Peacekeepers also. John had referred to Peacekeeper victory as a Pyrrhic one, and it was what Scorpius had intended all along.  
  
Oh, and incidentally, it had resulted in Scorpius becoming extremely rich. His one-time shadowbank account, that Natira had schemed so hard to wrest from him, was as a prowler to a leviathan, compared to what he later acquired. Nowadays he regularly gave twice that amount away to Reconstruction projects charities without blinking, generosity being an almost unconscious thing with him.  
  
I said, I had not regretted anything; but this is not true. The death of those Banik slaves.. if only I had been there to tell him how much gratitude, how many loyal supporters he would have gained if he had only freed them instead of giving them so casually to the rapacious Natira. This was the worst example of his impulsive, careless generosity.  
  
The happier result of his generosity was displayed in the holograms that sat on my dressing table. M'Lee and her offspring. There were seven of them, pure-bred calcivores, every one, strong, well-fed, and as beautiful as their mother. I cherished every picture; but the one I cherished most was the one of M'lee and her mate, standing at the gate of their cattle farm. The one located just five clicks away, the one I had visited only two days ago, with Scorpius.  
  
Also on my dressing table was a holo of Moya, and her son Talyn, probably the handsomest gunship you ever saw. This had been taken over a hundred cycles ago. I wish I knew what had become of them, and the gentle, selfless Pilot.  
  
One holoimage was conspicuous by it's absence, Stark, our sometime sex-partner, my sometime friend. I still held some affection for his memory, and would have kept his picture, but Scorpius could not bear to look at it. Stark's final betrayal and death still hurt him.  
  
"Poor Stark, he never could stay faithful to anyone, or anything. Not even to himself"; Scorpius had once said.  
  
There was my holoimage of John Crichton; we had only met once, briefly, during the only serious period of estrangement from Scorpius. I had stopped in at a repair station on some gods-forsaken asteroid in the wakket-hole of nowhere; whilst I waited for some surface damage to my prowler was being repaired, I took a walk in a nearby square, and saw Scorpius's adversary just squatting in front of a beggar-bird, crumbling bread in his fingers and feeding the woebegone creature. I started a conversation with him, beginning by asking why he fed such vermin.   
  
"His answer, that the bird reminded him of birds he used to feed back home, called "pigeons".   
And we talked for a while. I ended up telling him about my quarrel with my boyfriend (without mentioning names, of course); and he ended up telling me about his girlfriend's refusal to commit to a monogamous relationship; and for a while, I wondered if any of my brothers had turned out to be as, as nice, as this young man appeared to be. I had been struck by his generous spirit, his humour under adversity.   
  
Crichton never knew that I was Scorpius's lover; but once my love and I had been reconciled, I took great pleasure in telling Scorpius all about it; forbearing to point out that, had we still been lovers, I would have felt it my duty to inform Scorpius of his whereabouts immediately. In fact, I'm rather glad our union had been dissolved at that time. I would have hated to have the betrayal of John Crichton on my conscience. Scorpius always regretted the way he and John had become enemies. The truth is that he had never met anyone he admired more than John Crichton, never met anyone whose friendship he had wanted; and had never met a man who so inspired his lust - and not just for wormhole technology.  
  
And so, he kept a guardian eye over the welfare of John's children, long-distance, ever since. The Princess was happily married, or so the Publicity Department said, and we had no reason to doubt them. More importantly to Scorpius, she was a wise and popular leader; a combination almost impossible to achieve; but, being John Crichton's daughter, she had managed it. Her mother had abolished the custom of the living statues.  
  
As for the two sons born to John and Aeryn; one was a talented musician celebrated throughout several systems. The other was reputed to be leading the resistance against one of the few remaining Peacekeeper dictatorships of....., Scorpius had been supplying his movement with guns and money, anonymously, of course. For this, still young (by Sebacean standards) man still blamed Scorpius for the premature death of his father. He never believed that John Crichton, grief stricken by the death of Aeryn Sun, had simply gone back to Earth. Well, Scorpius and Rygel were the only witnesses.  
  
Scorpius saw me looking at the blurry, 2D "photo-graph" of the young man, who looked more like Aeryn than John, and said "One day, I will give him the co-ordinates", he mused for a while "I would have liked to have seen earth."  
  
Scorpius assisted me to my feet, lifting me bodily out of the huge carved bed that Rygel the XVII gave us when Scorpius announced his intention to retire here. It was in fact my idea to retire to Sykar. It was the first Peacekeeper subject planet to successfully throw off it's oppressors, and as such has sentimental value to me.   
  
Scorpius carried me to the door of the cleansing room before setting me on my feet. When I left it, freshly washed and evacuated, he was waiting for me. I nearly sent him downstairs, wanting to make it down the shallow staircase under my own power. On the stairs, however, a coughing fit overtook me, and I had to lean on him until it passed.  
  
We sat on the veranda, on woven grass chairs; whilst our Delvian housekeeper served breakfast of cracked grain porage, sweet breads and hot gworm tea. He also managed to eat several pieces of fruit, for age has not diminished his healthy appetite.   
  
He glanced at a holomessage that had arrived on his personal screen during the night, whilst I watched the ground birds chasing each other playfully across the lawn. I asked him what the message had been about.  
  
"The University of The Hynerian Empire has invited me to give a series of lectures on Wormhole Theory; I've decided to turn it down."  
  
"Oh, Scorpius! Why?"  
  
"You are not well enough to travel, and I will not consider leaving you behind."  
  
"But, wouldn't you like to visit the Dominar again? You know how much he likes you."  
  
"I fear his offspring will be disappointed if I turn up without you, you know how they love to hear your stories", said Scorpius with a smile.  
  
I remembered the royal palace, and how Scorpius and I had to stoop to enter the doors, and keep ourselves stooped once we were through most of them. Amidst all that luxury, the royal children bounced about like so many rubber balls, strangers to discipline, strangers to want or fear; yet so easily bribed into good behaviour by the promise of a story. It always embarrassed me that I could never remember all their names: embarrassed me, but amused them. I sighed, suddenly sad, because I knew I would never see them again.  
  
Scorpius took my hand.  
  
"We can't put the subject aside for any longer;" said Scorpius, "We both know that you will die soon".  
  
"Please don't give me the 'we shall never be parted' again, Scorpius, you know I want you to outlive me, it scares me to think that I...."  
  
Scorpius interrupted me by putting his black gloved fingers to my lips.  
  
"Very well then, I won't." he said."But there is something I know you very much want to do once more before our time together is over".  
  
The old familiar warmth began to flow through my groin. Old I may be, but dried up, never.  
  
"Apart from that", Scorpius smiled knowingly.  
  
I poured some more tea.  
  
"I know you won't tell me what it is, so I'll tell you." he said. "You want to travel through a worm-hole once more before you .. before you." he could not finish the sentence, but took my hand and put his lips to my fingers instead.  
  
I had always loved travelling via wormhole: the exhilarating speed, the dizzying rush through the panoply of swirling blues and silvers, the sudden delicious shock of emerging into unknown fields of space! My heartrate surged at the thought.  
  
"So, I commandeered Farscape 3 several days ago. I want us to make one final journey together before your pain becomes too bad." said Scorpius.  
  
"Scorpius! When for?"  
  
"Today, this afternoon, in fact."  
  
"So you thought you would just present me with it, just like that".  
  
"Yes" he said. "you see, I know what you want. When will you ever learn the folly of trying to conceal your dreams from me?"  
  
Within two arns my love and I sat in the forward cabin of Farscape 3; Scorpius in the pilot's chair, and me - wrapped in a thick velvet blanket, with the oxygen mask slung around my neck, in case I needed it. The adrenaline of excitement, mixed with a measure of anxiety, increased my lung capacity, a phenomenon that I had observed before .... it wouldn't last, but I determined to enjoy it while it lasted.  
  
"The only remaining problem with wormhole technology is the apparently unbreachable limit to the length of the wormhole. I've been working on the theory, John's theory, for the past few weeks now, ever since it became clear to me that you were not going to survive. I have found a limitation in it that he and I and all the other scientists who ever worked on it before failed to see. And, I believe I have found a way to overcome that limitation, to potentiate the   
negative force...."  
  
"Scorpius," I interrupted, exasperated, "You know I don't understand physics! Please, love. Get to the point!"  
  
"The silver nebula", he said. "No-one has ever reached it before".  
  
I looked at him, appalled.  
  
"I'm going to try and reach it" Scorpius announced. "We shall see it together".  
  
"But, Scorpius! The last five attempts ended in the death of the test pilots!"  
  
"Yes", he said calmly. And then he reached for the Initiator.   
  
"Oh my Scorpius, my love, it can't end this way, it mustn't!"  
  
"It's not over yet", said Scorpius, and his sweet black lips met mine tenderly. "Trust me".  
  
The swirling blue vortex opened up before us.  
  
On the other side, the silver nebula was more colourful and beautiful than we had ever imagined.  
  


****by Morgan Scorpion**  
**Copyright Julia Morgan 2001**

  
  
  


**Morgan Scorpion's Scorpius Fanfic  
http://lunarpages.com/scorpius/morgan70/index.html   
  
Author's Notes  
  
**Ever since the time I watched "Look At The Princess" for the second time, I have been 'in love' with Scorpius.   
I make no apologies for this - He would not.  
  
The series "Dark Master" existed as a set of jotted down fantasies, until ||Scorpius||:  
Master of the Sanctum of Scorpius encouraged me to submit the first three parts to his website.   
Since then I have re-written part 2 and part 3 slightly, to remove those elements that I didn't like.   
  
I did not intend to publish this, the final part of Dark Master, until I had typed out the middle parts which at the moment exist as notes or rough drafts: but spoilers from Season 3, (which we have not yet seen in England) seem to invalidate some of what I have written. Especially in this, the last part.  
  
For all of those who feel, like me, that Scorpius deserves to be a hero, and that he should have a happy ending, I have given him one.  
  
The I of the story is a projection of myself (idealised of course) into the Farscape universe.   
Scorpius, Crichton, Niem and others are the property of the Jim Henson co., to whom I offer my respect and gratitude.  
  
Especially, thank you to Wayne Pygram and Dave Elsey.  
  


  
  
  
  



End file.
